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Experimenting with WebRTC in Firefox Nightly

** July 25 UPDATE: Since we landed our initial WebRTC experiment in Nightly we have received lots of positive feedback. This update is to let you know that the WebRTC feature will now be available in Aurora so we can gather feedback from even more users. It’s important to note that we’re still in the testing and experimental phase and as always, we’re keen to get your feedback. We look forward to sharing more soon as the feature develops further.**

The number of different services that promise to make communication faster and simpler has exploded in recent years. As every new social messaging service comes online, we see increasing fragmentation that makes it harder to stay close to everyone you care about, everywhere around the world. Moving so frequently between walled gardens can be tiring and confusing.

So, we asked, what if Mozilla could help tear down these walls? What if the browser, with near universal adoption, could become keystone of an open, interoperable communications system.

Soon, in Firefox Nightly, you will see our first experiments in creating a WebRTC-powered communications feature that aims to connect everyone with a WebRTC-enabled browser. And that’s all you will need. No plug-ins, no downloads. If you have a browser, a camera and a mic, you’ll be able to make audio and video calls to anyone else with an enabled browser. It will eventually work across all of your devices and operating systems. And we’ll be adding lots more features in the future as we roll it out to more users. It’s going to be awesome!

From our industry-first implementation of DataChannels, to the first WebRTC call between two major browsers, we’ve been pushing WebRTC to deliver more value to users and developers and we’re continuing along this path with this experiment. But you shouldn’t expect a polished service quite yet. It’s early days and we’re just starting to test pieces of this service.

As we develop this experimental feature in Firefox, we’re proud to have a partner in TokBox who have provided invaluable help in getting this project to where it is today, and whose OpenTok video and voice platform powers the service. Their early support and contributions to WebRTC are helping this emerging standard establish a foothold and earn developer attention.

We’re excited to start testing this feature in our Nightly channel and look forward to providing frequent updates as we develop this service.